


Ain't Got Proof

by Phantoms_Echo



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Ed is giving Roy the Silent Treatment, Fluff, I think that sums up everything, Multi, No Smut, Roy is not happy about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 05:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7605058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantoms_Echo/pseuds/Phantoms_Echo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone had words. It was a fact. </p>
<p>On their right arms, ringing their wrists, everyone had the first words their soulmate would say to them.</p>
<p>Roy had never liked his words. Not one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't Got Proof

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or its characters and I do not make money off of this. I only create fantasies.
> 
> This was an idea I had sitting in my head for a while. I had planned on making it a chapter fic, but it was way shorter than I thought it would be. Oh well.

Everyone had words. It was a fact.

On their right arms, ringing their wrists, everyone had the first words their soulmate would say to them. Some had a single word while others had lengthy scrawls that encircled their wrists several times. It was a given that everyone would meet their soulmate, no matter where in the world they might be.

Roy had never liked his words. They were just… look at them!

**_Ain’t got proof._ **

Those were the words of some uncouth country bumpkin, probably a criminal if the word ‘proof’ had anything to do with it. Since Roy was a soldier for the police state of Amestria, he could just see himself barging into a residence one day and arresting someone that claimed he _‘ain’t got proof_ ’. That would be the first and last time he would see his soulmate.

The whole thing was dismal.

*          *          *          *          *

Roy had never head Edward Elric speak.

Ever since he was first recruited as a despondent cripple in a wheelchair, Ed hadn’t said a word to Roy. Everything he had to say came through his reports or his brother, Alphonse Elric. Roy wasn’t even sure what his voice sounded like.

The brunette was pretty sure it was because Roy had yelled at him and scared him with their first meeting. Honestly though, Roy had been scare. He had been ordered to assess the Elric children for a future position as State Alchemists. Word of their power and ingenuity had traveled far and wide.

So when he found the floor of their house covered in blood and an all too familiar array carved into the wooden floors, Roy had felt his heart stop. Why was it that every brilliant alchemist lost themselves to the madness of human transmutation?

More so, what made _children_ desperate enough to _try_?

Roy had been too relieved to see the brothers alive more or less. That relief had lasted all of one second before Roy looked into the eyes of the older brother. Eyes that burned in determination and desperation, there was no way that the boy wouldn’t try again, try something equally stupid to fix his mistake.

“ _We went to your house!_ ” Roy had shouted, suddenly angry at the boy’s persistence in the forbidden arts. “ _We saw the floor! What was that? What. Did. You. Do?!”_

The boy had flinched in shock, probably having never been spoke to in such a tone. Golden eyes quickly looked down, ashamed to be caught in his thoughts. He knew Roy could tell, could see in his eyes _exactly_ what he had been thinking. Roy wanted to shake the boy, to make him promise to _never_ commit such an act again –but his brother stepped in, acting as the boy’s voice.

After all those years, he had never stopped.

At first, it was funny –a game a child was playing with him, granted a grumpy, resentful child, but a child none-the-less. It was like the silent treatment for some perceived slight that Roy would never keep track of.

Now, after three years of being commander and subordinate, Roy was feeling more than a little hurt.

Did Ed really hate him that much?

*          *          *          *          *

“Sometimes, I gotta wonder about that kid.” Havoc said aloud once the Elrics had left the office for the day. “The things he says are so far above my head that it might as well be in space –but the way he says it makes it sound like I should know! Like it’s Layman’s terms!”

“What do you mean?” Roy asked, curious. He had yet to hear Edward speak, but his team ( _cough minions cough cough_ ) were on quite good terms with him.

“I don’t know how to explain it, Sir. You just have to hear him talk.” Havoc scratched as his head in confusion.

_I wish I could._ Roy thought to himself as he turned back to his paper work. _I wish I could._

*          *          *          *          *

“Good afternoon, Sir.” Hawkeye greeted Roy when he got back from lunch.

Roy froze in the doorway. “Hawkeye! I thought you had the day off?”

“No, just got caught up in something, Sir.” She replied, setting another stack of paper at his desk.

“All morning long?” He questioned, dubiously.

“Edward and I were speaking of matters of hand-to-hand combat.” She replied calmly. “He is quite intelligent about such matters. I wonder who his master was.”

“I don’t know.” Roy said gruffly as he dropped himself into his chair a little too dramatically.

Riza narrowed her eyes. “You should make an effort to speak with him, Sir. It does not bode well to alienate a team member.”

“Pencil it into my schedule, Hawkeye.” Roy replied, already starting through the newest stack of torture –er, papers.

*          *          *          *          *

“Oh, hey, Roy!” Maes waved at him, “Edward told me the _funniest_ joke the other day! Do you want to hear it?”

_“No.”_ Roy growled as he stalked past and slammed his door.

*          *          *          *          *

The more obvious it was that Roy was the _only_ one Ed refused to speak to, the more frustrated the brunette became. He was Ed’s commanding officer, the one that put up with his antics, the one that _got him here in the first place!_ The very least the blonde should do is greet him in the morning, to show some respect!

The more frustrated Roy got, the quieter Ed seemed to become (which is definitely not possible) and so on and so forth until everything finally came to a head.

Roy had been in his office alone all afternoon. The rest of his team had taken a sick day, all at once, for reasons beyond Roy’s comprehension. In his sulking, he imagined them all hanging out at a bar, getting drunk and picking up women, exactly what Roy wanted to be doing.

However, the Elrics were supposed to be back today and Roy needed to be here when Ed turned in his report. If the boy showed up sometime in the next _hour_ , Roy could go home early and read that book he’d picked out six months ago that he’d been meaning to read.

The door to his office opened without a knock, signaling Ed’s arrival.

“Glad to see you finally made it.” Roy said, internally wincing at the force behind those words. The blonde just scowled at him and stomped forward, report in hand. The boy’s reports were hardly legible with the chicken-scratch scrawl that the blonde seemed to have picked up somewhere, but he at least made an effort.

Before the boy could turn tail and run, Roy piped up, “Maes told me that you and Elicia share a birthday. You’re what, fourteen now?”

The blonde glared over his shoulder and mimed a ‘plus one’ at Roy, stubbornly refusing to talk.

“Fifteen?” Roy smirked, “No, that can’t be right. You’re too short.”

He could see that it hit a nerve with the youth as Ed’s face reddened and his lips pulled back, baring his teeth. Still, the boy didn’t say anything.

“Ah well,” Roy shrugged, “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, all around the same. All you guys think about is that _one_ out there somewhere, waiting just for you.”

Ed opened his mouth to speak and Roy tensed just the slightest in preparation, but the boy caught himself and shut his mouth with a click.

“What’s your words say?” Roy asked, curious. “Something like ‘Watch it shorty’ or ‘You’re too young to ride’?”

The boy’s face was darkening with every second he withheld his anger. Roy was impressed. He had heard of the blonde’s legendary temper from his team. He silently wondered how long he could keep this up.

“Come on, isn’t this something all kids at your age swoon over?” that mysterious someone that’s supposed to be your ‘forever’?” Roy pressed, unable to help himself.

Al wasn’t here, so Ed had to either walk away, or give Roy a tongue lashing he so desperately wanted to hear. The way the blonde was fuming, it wouldn’t be the former.

“The words of your soulmate? The brand of your lover? The proof of-?”

“Ain’t got proof.” Ed said through gritted teeth.

Roy’s world screeched to a halt as he cut off mid-sentence.

As if to compound his statement, the young alchemist shoved his right sleeve up, baring his metal limb for his commander to see. “I ain’t got proof of anything, _remember_?”

Those words, repeated from the same lips, threw Roy for a loop.

This wasn’t the aggressive scene he’d always imagined, where he’d have to take his soulmate away in chains. His soulmate wasn’t an uncouth moron from some backwater place. His soulmate was…

Ed.

Who was from the countryside of Risembool and had the accent to match. Who attempted human transmutation and lived. Who traded his arm and brand to get his brother back.

Who had known they were soulmates for years… and never told Roy.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Roy asked, lips pulling back in a snarl as he stood from his desk. “You knew this whole time –you had to have! That’s why you never said anything! Because-!”

“It would have been your words,” Ed finished sulkily. “At first, it was because I wanted it to be something memorable, something worthy of being a brand, but…”

The blonde looked ashamed as he wrapped his flesh hand around his automail wrist. “The longer it got, the longer I never said anything, the harder it was to believe that I was your soulmate… and that you were mine.”

He laughed, a bitter, humorless thing. “Your words should have tipped me off. _We went to your house. We saw the floor. What was that? What did you do?”_

Roy winced as he recalled the words he had said in anger and, now he could realize, down-right fear, as if the boy he’d just found – _his soulmate_ –would try a second time and not make it out alive.

“Even my soulmate would hate me.” Ed swallowed, his throat clicking audibly, “I would do something so horrible that they could only ask me what I had done, what it was that I had messed with.”

“After the incident, I wondered who would want me? I’ve only got half a body, no proof of anything. I’ve committed the taboo, not once but _twice_. Who, in their right minds, would want me as a soulmate?” Ed refused to take his eyes off the ground.

“I can think of at least one person.” Roy said, face set in a serious look. “And you’re looking at him.”

Golden eyes jerked up from the ground with a look so disbelieving that it broke Roy’s heart.

“Ed, you are one of the smartest, most passionate people I know.” Roy skirted the desk to stand before Ed. “You were able to attempt human transmutation at the age of eleven and, failing that, willing to not only give up your arm to keep your brother, but also the words of your soulmate, any proof that you had of a match in this world.”

Ed’s gaze dropped and Roy ducked his head to catch his eyes again. “That shows a loyalty and love beyond mere words on skin.” Roy reached out to swipe the blonde’s bangs behind his ear. “I am truly the luckiest man in the world.”

Ed’s smile was watery, but as genuine as Roy had ever seen. “I’ve been stupid.”

“Yes,” Roy grinned, “You have been.”

“ _You’re not supposed to agree with me, bastard!_ ”

“I am your soulmate, I will not lie to you.”

“Some lies are good.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ed leaned forward, burying his face in Roy’s chest, “I shouldn’t give you that much leeway.”

“Probably not.” Roy agreed, “But I’ll make sure not to be reckless with it.”

“Yeah. That’s _my_ job.” Ed huffed.

Roy chuckled. “I love you.”

Ed blushed bright red and hid his face again, but Roy could hear the quiet, muffled words, “ _Love you too, bastard._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews: I don't want to hear "Good job!" or "Another chapter please!". If you want to say either of those, just drop a kudos. Only make a comment if you're giving constructive criticism, something that can make my writing or my world better.


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